For security reasons, I am obligated to grow in soil.
I started growing indoors using one gallon containers too (with 5-6 different strains of weed including femm and auto and regular).
Thru trial and error, I have learned NOT to finish flowering in one gallon containers (unless necessary for security).
The plants I grew in one gallon containers produced very good pot, but I lost alot of quantity b/c of the small containers.
Now I use this (indoor) transplanting regimen: 16 ounce cups to sprout, then transplant to one gallon containers for 3-4 weeks, then to three gal. containers.
This was not my idea. Somewhere on the internet, there is a grower who wrote about the great benefit to indoor growers of using two transplants. He wrote that a smart grower will let each container get heavily rooted (this is why I use clear plastic 16 oz cups and square one gallon water bottles) before transplanting. By doing this, I can assist the plant to send out roots to better completely pervade the whole soil mass in a container.
In other words, if I were to just start a seed in a three gallon pot, I would be risking "root channeling" (so to speak) - that is, long heavy roots that only grow into the natural water flow "channels" that invariable form in a container.
After my last grow, I carefully washed away the soil from many of the plants after harvest and verified this principle. For example, the (feminized) seeds I had planted directly into a 3 gallon container grew well and produced great weed, but down inside the soil, the roots had grown in long thick branches, and fairly large volumes of soil had almost no roots at all. The tendency of the roots to grow in the "water channels" (for example along the sides of the container) was undeniable. But in the pots where I grew regular seeds (and transplanted 1 gal to 3 gal after sexing) there were nice thick gnarly root masses.
I wonder if anybody else has had a similar experience?
I also think that one of the reasons hydroponics produces (slightly) better weed is because hydroponically grown plants ALWAYS form thick bushy root masses (as opposed to long skinny root tendrils).
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